


Staring at Jellyfish.

by theatergirl06



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Angst, Beheaded Cousins, Fluffy Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24176521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatergirl06/pseuds/theatergirl06
Summary: Two bored cousins take a little trip, but one gets more than she bargained for while staring at the jellyfish.
Relationships: Anne Boleyn & Katherine Howard
Comments: 8
Kudos: 94





	Staring at Jellyfish.

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Panic attack, blood, beheading, imprisonment.

If Anne Boleyn were anyone other than herself, Kat would have found it odd that she was out on her cousin’s balcony and hanging a tie dye t-shirt over the edge. But she was Anne, and this was definitely not the oddest thing Kat had woken up to find her doing. 

Yawning and braiding her hair on the side, she stepped out onto the balcony and said hello to the second queen.

“Do I want to know why you’re making tie dye t-shirts on my balcony at 9 in the morning?”

“I was bored, Jane wouldn’t let me in the kitchen after I put too much water in that cake we made…”

“In fairness, we  _ did  _ nearly set the house on fire.”

“Anyway, I can’t go in the kitchen, Catherine and Cathy went to the park, and Anna’s still asleep because she was out until, like, 1 AM last night. I found some dye buried under some of my old sweats, and, well...here we are.”

“That dye is dripping onto the balcony underneath mine.”

“They won’t mind...right?”

“I don’t know, they minded when we got drunk and started singing 80s songs out here at midnight. And when we decided to do an egg drop using Jane’s plants that she was going to throw out, and when we tried to make frozen yogurt in January and when it turned out wrong we threw it over the side…”

“All right, all right.” Anne pulled the wet shirt off the edge of the balcony, the green dye staining her hands. “Point taken.”

Katherine grinned and twisted the final link in her braid, sealing it with an elastic. “This is what happens when we get bored.”

Anne groaned and flopped down onto the balcony, her dark hair spilling out onto the wood. “I hate being bored. It’s not my fault that I hate it that much!”

“You have literally dumped yogurt onto their balcony. Most people don’t do that when they’re bored!”

“Hey, you did that, too!”

Kat rolled over onto her back. “Alright, then we need to do something that makes us be...not bored before our neighbors throw us out of this apartment.”

Anne pushed herself up and propped her head on her hands. “Well then, what do you suggest?”

An hour later, the two cousins had ended up at the aquarium. It was a favorite place of all of the queens, and they each had their own favorite exhibit. All of them had been at least ten times.

Of course, the two cousins had never been on their own, and given Anne’s quirkiness and taste for chaos combined with Kat’s tendency to rely on her emotions, things tended to spiral out of control very quickly.

But today, everything seemed to be going smoothly. They’d both decided to look at the seals for a little longer than usual, and Kat was squealing at how adorable they were. They really  _ were  _ very cute. They were just  _ so  _ friendly looking!

She was so busy watching them twist and leap that she didn’t even notice her big cousin sneak away. It made her even more shocked when she returned with the most adorable stuffed seal she had ever seen in her entire life.

She hugged it. And then she hugged Anne.

Next, they ended up inside a huge room full of fish in every color. Anne kept thinking that she wanted to draw them, and Kat loved watching her cousin get so inspired. Rarely did she let down her snarky, chaotic guard and just... _ be.  _

In retrospect, Kat could understood why she never did.

When you were Anne Boleyn, letting your guard down was dangerous.   
Even when you were doing something as simple as staring at jellyfish.

Of course, they went to the jellyfish last. They both adored pretty much everything in the place (except that one odd little exhibit that was just one shell sitting in the middle). The kelp forest, the little sharks, the otters, the starfish, and of course, Kat’s favorite, the dolphins.

She stared at those dolphins for nearly an hour. They were so sweet and so smart. Kat loved all animals, but dolphins were one of the species she really felt a bond with. 

Anne didn’t mean to drag her away, but the aquarium was closing in ten minutes, and she wanted to look at the jellyfish.

Ever since they first came to the aquarium, the jellyfish had always been Anne’s favorite. They were just so...unique, and gorgeous. There was nothing else like them. 

They were absolutely hypnotic, and Anne found herself completely unable to look away every single time she saw them.

There was only one thing that drew her eye more than the translucent jellyfish. And she never expected to see it in an aquarium.

But of course there was a long poster on the wall describing different types of jellyfish stings. It was an aquarium, after all. It was completely full of information. 

And...of course there were...pictures….of the stings. And the...red...and all the blood.

_ Suddenly she was back on the scaffolding. There was a sword swinging towards her neck, and she forced herself to keep her eyes open. She would not squint her eyes shut and cry. She was a queen. She would not sink that low. _

_ But that meant she had to see the blood. And the red covering everything around her. And that meant she got to feel her head slowly loosening from her neck as she looked out into the crowd and saw the faces of the thousands of people who were waiting to see her brutally murdered. _

_ She looked to the left and saw her best friend, sobbing and fighting for her life. By doing this, she had damaged her friend forever. She would never see her again to be able to apologize.  _

_ To her left was her husband. The one she’d thought absolutely adored her. The one who she’d tried to avoid, tried to share her opinions with, because she’d thought he would listen, because she’d thought his love was unconditional, like he’d said. _ _   
_ _ She should have known better. She should have seen this coming. She and Catherine were so similar, and look what had happened to her. _

_ And when she looked straight ahead, she saw the merciless crowd, cheering for her execution.  _

_ Red filled her vision and there was nothing but pain. _

_ She waited for it to end, for everything to just stop. _

_ It didn’t. _

_ It went on. _

_ And on. _

_ And on. _

“Anne?”

Wincing in pain, Anne slowly opened her eyes. 

“Where am I?”

Katherine sighed and used her arms to help her cousin up to a seated position. 

“You were looking at the jellyfish, and all of a sudden you started screaming and you just fell on the floor. I didn’t know what to do, so I started screaming, too, and I...may have convinced everyone at the aquarium that we were rehearsing a scene from a play. And the aquarium may have closed and I may have been unable to move you and hidden us in the corner.” She said the last bit very fast, a trait she shared with Anne when they were trying to explain whatever sort of trouble they’d caused that day. 

Normally, Anne would find this endearing.

But all she could see was the locked door.

_ The cold door of stone, trapping her in the Tower for months on end. Being trapped had felt awful to her. It felt like her very soul was slowly draining from her body. _

_ That was what was happening now. The locked door wasn’t opening, and she was going to be stuck in this place forever. She was never going to see her daughter. Hell, she would never even see rain or snow.  _

_ She was never going to be herself again. _

_ She swung her fists at the walls until they were covered in blood, and then she swung them even more. Might as well bleed to death now, on her own terms. It was better than the sword that was inevitably coming for her. _

“Anne! You need to calm down.”

Anne screamed and blindly flailed her arms, caught between the past and the present, until she felt a pair of arms latch onto her shoulders and not let go.

“It’s not that easy!”

“I know it isn’t. Maybe better than anyone. But you’re breaking the glass.”

The shock of Katherine’s words was enough to snap her back to the present. Sure enough, there were cracks spider webbing through the side of one of the glass enclosures. Thank God it was the odd one with the seashell instead of one that was actually full of water.

Anne stared at her cousin, hands covered in blood and broken glass. “Did I really just do that?”

Katherine nodded, and Anne realized she was clutching the stuffed seal from earlier that day close to her chest. Kat was like that. She hugged things when she got nervous. 

Anne stared at her cousin, tears spilling out of her eyes. “I swear I wasn’t hiding anything. It’s just…”

“Sometimes it gets hard.”

Anne looked at the fifth queen and nodded. “Yeah.”

“You know I had a hard time with the stings, too.”

“You did?”

“I did. But I knew I had to help you.”

Anne laughed through her tears. “Well, how pathetic does that make me?”

Kat came forward and wrapped her arms around her beloved cousin. “Anne, that’s not the point. The point is that we all have bad days. We all need help every now and again. Do you remember what I was like when we first came back? I couldn’t be alone because I would try to jump off of buildings. I couldn’t go one night without waking up screaming. I don’t remember a day where I didn’t end up crying in someone’s arms.” She looked the beheaded queen right in the eyes. “But I got through it. I let people help me, and I came out on the other side. You’re so strong, Anne…” she trailed off, almost unsure of her words. “I know you can make it through the bad days.”

Anne sighed and reached for the pink haired queen’s hand. “Can we maybe...not talk about this too much? I’m sort of exhausted.”   
Katherine gave her a soft smile. “As long as you’re not repressing.”

Anne laughed. “I promise I’m not.”   
“All right, then. Let’s go home.”

“Don’t forget your little seal!”

“Of course I won’t. She’s a gift from you.”


End file.
